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One of the prime comic Voices In My Head, along with Phil Silvers, Jack Benny Groucho Marx and Spike Milligan (among a select few others) is that of Mel Brooks. There are lines spoken by/written by Mel Brooks that simply are not funny if the wrong people say them. But in the right hands, or larynges, or whatever, Golden Magic. Many will be said tonight.

Tonight (July 24) at 8:00 p.m., TCM will broadcast the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award/ Salute to Mel Brooks (and again at 12:30 a.m.), as well as a few of the high points of his career, including the underappreciated The Twelve Chairs at 9:30 p.m., the can-never-be-appreciated-enough Young Frankensteinat 2:00 a.m., and the already-appreciated-on-this-site The Producers at 4:00 a.m.

In amongst those glories, TCM has peppered the evening with pleasant little surprises like a Carson interview at 11:15 p.m. (promoting To Be or Not To Be, I think, if the date is any hint), a documentary on the 2000-Year-Old Man recordings with Personal Hero Carl Reiner at 11:30 p.m. (a picture of these two hangs in my studio, near a pair of pictures of Bert Lahr that are better explained at another time), and an hour-long Dick Cavett interview at 5:30 a.m.